THE BEST THINGS

It’s December 2nd, 2019. Mom just called to say she got me a mic and sound card so I can start recording music and hopefully build a business from it. I forgot to tell her my laptop was stolen in school because I was excited that I finally got to make proper music after two years of freestyling how to make beats and spending money to record a terrible song. The best thing in my life was coming home to see a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Second Gen kit waiting for me.

It’s December 19th, 2019. I’ve just completed my first two records and a couple of drafts. I haven’t gotten comfortable with singing when people are around me, so I do my best when everyone’s left the house. In between playing games and watching Vines on YouTube, I write songs in my diary, and I already have a full list of songs I’ll type into Microsoft Word so I can lock in for a full album. The best thing in my life was having completed “Candy Bars”, my first “and only rap song” (we all know how that panned out).

It’s January 17th, 2020. I have just uploaded “Candy Bars” to my Audiomack account as ‘XO Grey’. I’ve sent the link to some of my WhatsApp contacts. Solomon texts me to say two things: one, I sound like another upcoming artist, Layzee Ella, and Kendrick Lamar. Two, my vocals were overshadowed by the instrumental I made. I took the compliment and the suggestion to make better mixes for my next song. The best thing in my life was having released my first song.

It’s February the ??? of 2020. I’m not too good at dates. I mean, I recall dropping another song on Audiomack on March 20th, 2020, but that’s because when they told us we could go home because of the Coronavirus for two weeks, I took the first bus home. Little did I know that two weeks would become a month, a month would become two months, two months would become six, and six months would become nine. All that time, I spent learning how to mix, master and upload music to platforms other than Audiomack and SoundCloud. I still suck at mastering, but I got other things on lock. The best thing in my life was having released two solid projects, “Juvenile - The EP” and “0049: Aliens on the Dark Web”.

School had resumed and, somewhere around March 2021, I opened my WhatsApp to see Oddlxfe perform my verse on “Rap Asylum” in front of people. I was overjoyed! My song! Our song! In front of people! The best thing in my life was knowing I could do that someday, even if I was still received as a background producer and people didn’t take me seriously as an artist.

May 21st, I dropped “Good Vibes Afterwards” and retired the name XO Grey. The experiment was over and I was ready to emerge as a full-fledged artist. I wanted the name “INVERT”, but that was taken, so I thought of fusing two names together and birthed “INVERMON” (the name evolved with time and so did the meaning). Around 36 songs had been made as XO Grey, a few covers and a whole vulnerable bliss was covered; lockdown, police brutality, personal issues. Heck, I even started using Auto-Tune to clean up my vocals. It helped a lot because once I could hear what a good pitch was, I started getting comfortable with my own voice enough to improve my singing. Also, I rapped a lot more, so I guess that dream of being a pop star would sacrifice itself to the altar of versatility.

The best thing in my life was making music.

It still is.

I am…

Grateful.